The Problem: One of the major environmental problems in society today is that of electronic waste, and one company that ends up creating a lot of it is Apple. Computers and phones are a large contributor to e-waste, and Apple releases products – the iPhone and iPod in particular – around twice a year, according to a paper on e-waste in the United States. A paper on creative recycling of e-waste pointed out that “Seventy-seven percent of the 1.5 million Apple’s iPhone 4 sales on the first day of launch in June 2010 were upgrades purchased by existing iPhone owners. … Apple has been successful in building a recurring revenue stream from a growing base of loyal customers. Environmentally speaking, … the launch of iPhone 4 accelerated the creation of e-waste. In just a single day, most of those fully functioning and relatively state-of the-art mobile phones suddenly became of little to no use: migrating into desk drawers, storage bins, and garages.”
This isn’t just an issue for the phones themselves, however; there is an entire ecosystem of cases, docks, speakers, and other accessories that end up being made completely obsolete every time Apple releases a new product, and, with slightly different case designs to accommodate different carriers and colors, this problem has gotten even worse lately.
For ecological issues, Apple also has had problems with toxics in the past; Greenpeace, in particular, had launched a campaign to convince Apple to make greener products; however, there are reports that there are still issues with Apple’s supply chain causing pollution as of September 6th, 2011.
Another technical issue is how Apple handles operating system updates; while they haven’t done it as much recently, earlier OS X versions were often artificially limited to newer machines. While that does result in a guaranteed positive user experience, some users have managed to get it to work on older machines and report that it works fine. These sorts of limitations tend to make older machines obsolete more quickly, which is a shame, given how long some of Apple’s older hardware tends to last. Stakeholders: There are multiple stakeholders with regards to the environmental impact of Apple’s products. Apple, of course, is one of the main ones, but there are also others affect. Accessory manufacturers end up having to dispose of their old inventory. In the same way, customers end up having to replace large portions of their iPod or iPhone accessories every time a new devices comes out. The workers at Apple’s factories are also stakeholders – in many cases, they’re affected by the pollution and poor working conditions. Potential Solutions: If Apple could standardize their products more – not having four slightly different sizes for their iPhones, for example – this would let people reuse their cases. Another potential solution that is already being done is creating greener cases, like Bioserie is doing – this would help the environment both during the product production, as well as allow the cases to biodegrade if the user does have to get rid of the case. Bonus points if someone figures out how to make a case that, when planted, doubles as apple seeds. Images: http://nozama.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54ed05fc288330120a58ef8e7970c-800wi http://www.applegazette.com/wp-content/uploads/1254211922505px-OS_X-Logo.svg_.png http://rebgaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/t1larg.white_.iphone.thickness.jpg http://thetechnologicalcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Throwing-Ipods3.jpg http://www.instablogsimages.com/images/2010/09/02/bioseries-bioplastic-iphone-case_ZxNRt_24429.jpg
Resources: http://sustainablebusinessforum.com/davemeyer01/53880/chinese-ngo-claims-apple-supply-chain-sustainability-rotten-core-will-consumers-ag http://www.greenmyapple.org/ http://www.bioserie.com/ http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/09/dark-side-apples-supply-chain-core/ Papers: 1. Full citation.
Pax, Phoenix. “Haste Makes E-Waste: A Compattaive Analysis of How the United States Should Approach the Growing E-Waste Threat.”
2. Where does the author work, what else has s/he written about, and what are her/his credentials?
Phoenix Pak is currently a research associate at the Public Patent Foundation, as well as a contract attorney at McDermott Will and Emery; he went to the Benjamin N. Cardazo School of Law at Yeshiva University, as well as RPI. (http://www.linkedin.com/in/phoenixpak)
3. What is the main topic or argument of the text?
The article summarizes some of the issues with e-waste in the US, and explore some of the history of the issue. Pax discusses details of the issue, and what has been done so far to try to solve the problem.
4. Describe at least three ways that the main topic or argument is fleshed out.
The article gives some background information about e-waste, and how it’s a recent problem, since newer electronics are often awkward or expensive to repair. He discusses some of the ecological problems with e-waste, mentioning some of the toxics that are present in electronics. Finally, he discusses the initiatives in the United States to deal with the problem.
5. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?
“These benefits notwithstanding, recycling e-waste can be a substantial financial undertaking,62 which will lead those bearing financial responsibility to employ the cheapest recycling alternative available. These alternatives may create other problems, discussed below, and do not ultimately address, and may even aggravate the primary issue of hazardous materials being released into the environment.”
“The hazardous materials content in e-waste coupled with the complex construction and lack of standardization in electronic product designs make for an extremely difficult product to recycle.
63”
“A niche market for e-waste has developed from this practice; successive recyclers buy e-waste, harvest the most valuable components and materials69 for resale and sell off the remaining components and materials to the next recycler.”
6. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports your research focus.
One of the major issues with the products Apple makes is the resulting e-waste, and the article gives a good overview of the issue, and mentions Apple in particular in terms of releasing products often, giving the issue a bit more weight.
7. List at least two details or references from the text that you have used in your presentation and wiki post.
Apple releases about 2 iPods per year; the paper also provides some background information on how often computers tend to come out: “The useful life of a PC is subject to Moore’s law, which states that manufacturing technology will advance at a rate that allows for computer processing power to double every 18 months.33 In 2001, an estimated 41 million PCs became obsolete, and nearly 500 million PCs reached obsolescence between 1997 and 2007.34 Some manufacturers release new products at an even faster rate. For example, Apple releases a new iPod model about every six months.” (underlining mine)
The paper discusses some of the solutions California has some up with for e-waste recycling, and the fact that the consumer has to foot the bill for larger electronic devices (with a greater-than-4-inch screen).
1. Full citation.
Kim, Sunyoung; Paulos, Eric. “Practices in the Creative Reuse of e-Waste.” CHI 2011. Session: Sustainability 2.
2. Where does the author work, what else has s/he written about, and what are her/his credentials?
Kim was a student at Carnegie Mellon University studying HCI, and has been working as a research intern at IBM Research Almaden; they’ve written a few other HCI and computer-related papers. Paulos is an associate professor of human-computer interaction at CMU.
3. What is the main topic or argument of the text?
The paper mostly focuses on creative ways to re-use old electronics; the paper explores why people get rid of electronics (using a survey). The authors had people take pictures of products they have disposed of and fill out a survey about why they got rid of it, etc.
4. Describe at least three ways that the main topic or argument is fleshed out.
The paper starts out with a discussion of what e-waste is. It talks about the survey they did, and finishes with a nice gallery of the sorts of products people made (including several Mac modifications I had seen before online, which was neat).
5. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?
“When e-waste is improperly discarded as trash, there are predictable negative impacts on the environment and human health.”
“First, e-waste is considered different from generic waste; in fact, most obsolete electronics are not regarded as “waste”. Second, much e-waste is still functioning or has either material or emotional value. Lastly, people showed a contradiction between their expectations or desires and the anticipation of e-waste for the future use of their e-waste.”
“The overarching long-term goal of this work is to find ways to facilitate latent resources such as e-waste, and to prolong the longevity of use in electronic products by its creative reuse. As a practical goal for this paper, we aimed to develop a simple design strategy that can inspire everyday people to participate in the creative reuse of e-waste.”
6. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports your research focus.
The paper provides some good evidence about how Apple’s new product releases cause e-waste.
7. List at least two details or references from the text that you have used in your presentation and wiki post.
The paper discusses how Apple’s release of the iPhone 4 was great for Apple, but not so much with regards to e-waste: “Seventy-seven percent of the 1.5 million Apple’s iPhone 4 sales on the first day of launch in June 2010 were upgrades purchased by existing iPhone owners [22]. Economically speaking, Apple has been successful in building a recurring revenue stream from a growing base of loyal customers. Environmentally speaking, on the other hand, the launch of iPhone 4 accelerated the creation of e-waste. In just a single day, most of those fully functioning and relatively state-of the-art mobile phones suddenly became of little to no use: migrating into desk drawers, storage bins, and garages.”
It also discusses current solutions to e-waste: “Existing ewaste solutions range from designing for reuse to fabricating with eco-friendly decomposable materials to more radical critiques of current practices surrounding capitalism and consumerism.”
1. Full citation.
Blevis, Eli. “Sustainable Interaction Design: Invention & Disposal, Renewal & Reuse.” CHI 2007 Proceedings.
2. Where does the author work, what else has s/he written about, and what are her/his credentials?
Blevis works at Indiana University as an Associate Professor of Informatics in the HCI Design program. His other papers are generally about HCI, digital imagery, and sustainability. (http://eli.informatics.indiana.edu/)
3. What is the main topic or argument of the text?
The paper discusses how the design of products can be made to promote sustainability.
4. Describe at least three ways that the main topic or argument is fleshed out.
The paper starts out by discussing the general idea of products being designed to promote sustainability, and the author’s methods. He then discusses sustainable interaction design. Finally, he discusses how particular companies – Apple, for one – can make their products encourage sustainability.
5. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?
“A sustainability proposition in this case is that to be truly responsible from the perspective of sustainability, Apple needs to use its fashion and design talents to make it chic to want to own and keep an heirloom quality iPod, even if some of its components need to be updated from time to time and rather than making it fashionable to have the new and latest iPod.”
“From a designerly perspective of sustainability, the issue of how invention drives disposal means understanding why people want new things and looking for ways to get them to prefer the alternatives to such cycles of acquisition and disposal.” “It is not enough to hope that people will prefer renewal & reuse to invention & disposal—human nature must be taken into account. At least in the United States, people seem to have a strong preference for new things over old ones.” 6. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports your research focus.
It provides some good examples of what Apple can do to promote sustainable products.
7. List at least two details or references from the text that you have used in your presentation and wiki post.
“A sustainability proposition in this case is that to be truly responsible from the perspective of sustainability, Apple needs to use its fashion and design talents to make it chic to want to own and keep an heirloom quality iPod, even if some of its components need to be updated from time to time and rather than making it fashionable to have the new and latest iPod.”
“In the US, the cost of upgrading an old personal computer is oftentimes considerably more than the cost of replacing it with a new one—a condition which almost certainly owes more to marketing practices than to actual costs of manufacture.”
The Problem:
One of the major environmental problems in society today is that of electronic waste, and one company that ends up creating a lot of it is Apple. Computers and phones are a large contributor to e-waste, and Apple releases products – the iPhone and iPod in particular – around twice a year, according to a paper on e-waste in the United States. A paper on creative recycling of e-waste pointed out that “Seventy-seven percent of the 1.5 million Apple’s iPhone 4 sales on the first day of launch in June 2010 were upgrades purchased by existing iPhone owners. … Apple has been successful in building a recurring revenue stream from a growing base of loyal customers. Environmentally speaking, … the launch of iPhone 4 accelerated the creation of e-waste. In just a single day, most of those fully functioning and relatively state-of the-art mobile phones suddenly became of little to no use: migrating into desk drawers, storage bins, and garages.”
This isn’t just an issue for the phones themselves, however; there is an entire ecosystem of cases, docks, speakers, and other accessories that end up being made completely obsolete every time Apple releases a new product, and, with slightly different case designs to accommodate different carriers and colors, this problem has gotten even worse lately.
For ecological issues, Apple also has had problems with toxics in the past; Greenpeace, in particular, had launched a campaign to convince Apple to make greener products; however, there are reports that there are still issues with Apple’s supply chain causing pollution as of September 6th, 2011.
Another technical issue is how Apple handles operating system updates; while they haven’t done it as much recently, earlier OS X versions were often artificially limited to newer machines. While that does result in a guaranteed positive user experience, some users have managed to get it to work on older machines and report that it works fine. These sorts of limitations tend to make older machines obsolete more quickly, which is a shame, given how long some of Apple’s older hardware tends to last.
Stakeholders:
There are multiple stakeholders with regards to the environmental impact of Apple’s products. Apple, of course, is one of the main ones, but there are also others affect. Accessory manufacturers end up having to dispose of their old inventory. In the same way, customers end up having to replace large portions of their iPod or iPhone accessories every time a new devices comes out. The workers at Apple’s factories are also stakeholders – in many cases, they’re affected by the pollution and poor working conditions.
Potential Solutions:
If Apple could standardize their products more – not having four slightly different sizes for their iPhones, for example – this would let people reuse their cases. Another potential solution that is already being done is creating greener cases, like Bioserie is doing – this would help the environment both during the product production, as well as allow the cases to biodegrade if the user does have to get rid of the case. Bonus points if someone figures out how to make a case that, when planted, doubles as apple seeds.
Images:
http://nozama.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54ed05fc288330120a58ef8e7970c-800wi
http://www.applegazette.com/wp-content/uploads/1254211922505px-OS_X-Logo.svg_.png
http://rebgaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/t1larg.white_.iphone.thickness.jpg
http://thetechnologicalcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Throwing-Ipods3.jpg
http://www.instablogsimages.com/images/2010/09/02/bioseries-bioplastic-iphone-case_ZxNRt_24429.jpg
Resources:
http://sustainablebusinessforum.com/davemeyer01/53880/chinese-ngo-claims-apple-supply-chain-sustainability-rotten-core-will-consumers-ag
http://www.greenmyapple.org/
http://www.bioserie.com/
http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/09/dark-side-apples-supply-chain-core/
Papers:
1. Full citation.
Pax, Phoenix. “Haste Makes E-Waste: A Compattaive Analysis of How the United States Should Approach the Growing E-Waste Threat.”
2. Where does the author work, what else has s/he written about, and what are her/his credentials?
Phoenix Pak is currently a research associate at the Public Patent Foundation, as well as a contract attorney at McDermott Will and Emery; he went to the Benjamin N. Cardazo School of Law at Yeshiva University, as well as RPI. (http://www.linkedin.com/in/phoenixpak)
3. What is the main topic or argument of the text?
The article summarizes some of the issues with e-waste in the US, and explore some of the history of the issue. Pax discusses details of the issue, and what has been done so far to try to solve the problem.
4. Describe at least three ways that the main topic or argument is fleshed out.
The article gives some background information about e-waste, and how it’s a recent problem, since newer electronics are often awkward or expensive to repair. He discusses some of the ecological problems with e-waste, mentioning some of the toxics that are present in electronics. Finally, he discusses the initiatives in the United States to deal with the problem.
5. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?
“These benefits notwithstanding, recycling e-waste can be a substantial financial undertaking,62 which will lead those bearing financial responsibility to employ the cheapest recycling alternative available. These alternatives may create other problems, discussed below, and do not ultimately address, and may even aggravate the primary issue of hazardous materials being released into the environment.”
“The hazardous materials content in e-waste coupled with the complex construction and lack of standardization in electronic product designs make for an extremely difficult product to recycle.
63”
“A niche market for e-waste has developed from this practice; successive recyclers buy e-waste, harvest the most valuable components and materials69 for resale and sell off the remaining components and materials to the next recycler.”
6. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports your research focus.
One of the major issues with the products Apple makes is the resulting e-waste, and the article gives a good overview of the issue, and mentions Apple in particular in terms of releasing products often, giving the issue a bit more weight.
7. List at least two details or references from the text that you have used in your presentation and wiki post.
Apple releases about 2 iPods per year; the paper also provides some background information on how often computers tend to come out: “The useful life of a PC is subject to Moore’s law, which states that manufacturing technology will advance at a rate that allows for computer processing power to double every 18 months.33 In 2001, an estimated 41 million PCs became obsolete, and nearly 500 million PCs reached obsolescence between 1997 and 2007.34 Some manufacturers release new products at an even faster rate. For example, Apple releases a new iPod model about every six months.” (underlining mine)
The paper discusses some of the solutions California has some up with for e-waste recycling, and the fact that the consumer has to foot the bill for larger electronic devices (with a greater-than-4-inch screen).
1. Full citation.
Kim, Sunyoung; Paulos, Eric. “Practices in the Creative Reuse of e-Waste.” CHI 2011. Session: Sustainability 2.
2. Where does the author work, what else has s/he written about, and what are her/his credentials?
Kim was a student at Carnegie Mellon University studying HCI, and has been working as a research intern at IBM Research Almaden; they’ve written a few other HCI and computer-related papers. Paulos is an associate professor of human-computer interaction at CMU.
3. What is the main topic or argument of the text?
The paper mostly focuses on creative ways to re-use old electronics; the paper explores why people get rid of electronics (using a survey). The authors had people take pictures of products they have disposed of and fill out a survey about why they got rid of it, etc.
4. Describe at least three ways that the main topic or argument is fleshed out.
The paper starts out with a discussion of what e-waste is. It talks about the survey they did, and finishes with a nice gallery of the sorts of products people made (including several Mac modifications I had seen before online, which was neat).
5. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?
“When e-waste is improperly discarded as trash, there are predictable negative impacts on the environment and human health.”
“First, e-waste is considered different from generic waste; in fact, most obsolete electronics are not regarded as “waste”. Second, much e-waste is still functioning or has either material or emotional value. Lastly, people showed a contradiction between their expectations or desires and the anticipation of e-waste for the future use of their e-waste.”
“The overarching long-term goal of this work is to find ways to facilitate latent resources such as e-waste, and to prolong the longevity of use in electronic products by its creative reuse. As a practical goal for this paper, we aimed to develop a simple design strategy that can inspire everyday people to participate in the creative reuse of e-waste.”
6. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports your research focus.
The paper provides some good evidence about how Apple’s new product releases cause e-waste.
7. List at least two details or references from the text that you have used in your presentation and wiki post.
The paper discusses how Apple’s release of the iPhone 4 was great for Apple, but not so much with regards to e-waste: “Seventy-seven percent of the 1.5 million Apple’s iPhone 4 sales on the first day of launch in June 2010 were upgrades purchased by existing iPhone owners [22]. Economically speaking, Apple has been successful in building a recurring revenue stream from a growing base of loyal customers. Environmentally speaking, on the other hand, the launch of iPhone 4 accelerated the creation of e-waste. In just a single day, most of those fully functioning and relatively state-of the-art mobile phones suddenly became of little to no use: migrating into desk drawers, storage bins, and garages.”
It also discusses current solutions to e-waste: “Existing ewaste solutions range from designing for reuse to fabricating with eco-friendly decomposable materials to more radical critiques of current practices surrounding capitalism and consumerism.”
1. Full citation.
Blevis, Eli. “Sustainable Interaction Design: Invention & Disposal, Renewal & Reuse.” CHI 2007 Proceedings.
2. Where does the author work, what else has s/he written about, and what are her/his credentials?
Blevis works at Indiana University as an Associate Professor of Informatics in the HCI Design program. His other papers are generally about HCI, digital imagery, and sustainability. (http://eli.informatics.indiana.edu/)
3. What is the main topic or argument of the text?
The paper discusses how the design of products can be made to promote sustainability.
4. Describe at least three ways that the main topic or argument is fleshed out.
The paper starts out by discussing the general idea of products being designed to promote sustainability, and the author’s methods. He then discusses sustainable interaction design. Finally, he discusses how particular companies – Apple, for one – can make their products encourage sustainability.
5. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?
“A sustainability proposition in this case is that to be truly responsible from the perspective of sustainability, Apple needs to use its fashion and design talents to make it chic to want to own and keep an heirloom quality iPod, even if some of its components need to be updated from time to time and rather than making it fashionable to have the new and latest iPod.”
“From a designerly perspective of sustainability, the issue of how invention drives disposal means understanding why people want new things and looking for ways to get them to prefer the alternatives to such cycles of acquisition and disposal.”
“It is not enough to hope that people will prefer renewal & reuse to invention & disposal—human nature must be taken into account. At least in the United States, people seem to have a strong preference for new things over old ones.”
6. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports your research focus.
It provides some good examples of what Apple can do to promote sustainable products.
7. List at least two details or references from the text that you have used in your presentation and wiki post.
“A sustainability proposition in this case is that to be truly responsible from the perspective of sustainability, Apple needs to use its fashion and design talents to make it chic to want to own and keep an heirloom quality iPod, even if some of its components need to be updated from time to time and rather than making it fashionable to have the new and latest iPod.”
“In the US, the cost of upgrading an old personal computer is oftentimes considerably more than the cost of replacing it with a new one—a condition which almost certainly owes more to marketing practices than to actual costs of manufacture.”